An American Airlines MD-80 airplane sits at a gate at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport before taking its last flight to Roswell, New Mexico where it will be retired from service.

RETIRING THE MD-80

Jet makes its final trip for American Airlines after 24 years in the sky

Written by:TERRY MAXON | Staff Writer

Photography by:MATTHEW BUSCH | Staff Photographer

Posted on: May 10, 2014

ROSWELL, N.M. — N7530, a shiny American Airlines jet, isn’t simply nearing the Roswell International Air Center runway as it sinks through the dry New Mexico air one recent morning. It is approaching the end of its 24-year working life.

Once it rolls into a slot in a long line of fading AA jets, workers here will record its serial numbers, take off its medical equipment and other paraphernalia, drain its tanks and close it up. Unless there’s a change of heart, a sudden surge in business, the airplane has ended its service with American Airlines.

It’s a fate that will be shared over the next few years by the rest of its fleet mates as American retires the remaining airplanes from what used to be the biggest fleet in its history, the McDonnell Douglas MD-80.

At one time, American operated more than 370 MD-80s, which it dubbed the Super 80. Now there are fewer than 160 left, and the fleet will shrink to under 140 by year’s end. By the end of 2018, if plans aren’t changed, the last MD-80 will be out of American’s enormous fleet.

Almost every American pilot of the last three decades has spent time in the MD-80 cockpit. Billy Parker, hired at American in 1989, logged 13,250 flying hours in the plane, which he described as “just a good, reliable pair of blue jeans.”

“It’s not as sexy as the newer airplanes,” he said, “but man, it has been a workhorse.”

Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with N7530, which was delivered to American in September 1990. Its engines are humming, its interior is clean, its skin of polished aluminum still gleams.

Until its last day, it carried hundreds of American Airlines passengers each day throughout the U.S. In the four days before this final flight, it had flown out of its North Texas home to Detroit, El Paso, Little Rock, Milwaukee, Nashville, Oklahoma City, Ontario, Calif., Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Tulsa and Washington, D.C.

Twenty-one flights in all, each beginning or ending at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, covering nearly 15,000 miles as the crow flies, somewhat more as air traffic controllers dictate.

The problem with N7530 is simply that it is old. Its lease has about run out. If American were to keep it, it would need an extensive, expensive maintenance overhaul in the near future.

And in a world of $3-a-gallon jet fuel, its newer, more efficient companions in the American fleet have made N7530’s continued service, and that of the other MD-80s, not a money-wise proposition.

“There are new aircraft coming in that are more fuel-efficient, and the cost of fuel is so much higher than when those airplanes were purchased,” Parker said. “The economics are much better to bring in a new airplane because you save enough in fuel.”

New jets arriving

American placed an order for 200 Boeing 737-800 jets and 260 from the Airbus A320 family in July 2011. The first half of the orders, already arriving, are current generations of those airplanes and are much more efficient than the MD-80. The second half will be even more efficient versions.

Boeing 737-800

US Airways, which merged with American on Dec. 9, has its own order for 30 planes from the Airbus A320 family arriving in 2014 and 2015.

American placed its first order for MD-80s in 1982 for much the same reasons that it is parking them now — a desire to cut operating costs.

“The operating efficiency of the Super 80 stems from its twin-engine, twin-seat cockpit design. On American’s system, it performs the same missions as a 727 aircraft, which has three engines and requires three cockpit crew members,” American noted in its 1983 annual report.

“The Super 80 therefore conserves fuel while enhancing pilot productivity. On a route of 750 miles, the Super 80’s fuel cost per seat mile is 37 percent less than that of a 727-100, while its cockpit crew cost per seat mile is 42 percent less.”

American’s first jet was the Boeing 707, a four-engine aircraft with a long range and four loud and thirsty engines that entered American’s fleet in 1959. It left in 1981.

Next came the three-engine Boeing 727, first flown by American in 1964. At one time, the carrier operated 182 of the planes.

By 1982, American was looking for an airplane in the 130- to 150-seat range that could fly most domestic routes. McDonnell Douglas Corp. urged the carrier to take a look at the MD-80.

The MD-80 is a longer and more modern version of the Douglas Aircraft Co.’s DC-9, a short- to medium-haul aircraft that first began flying for Delta Air Lines Inc. in 1965. McDonnell Douglas Corp., formed in the 1967 merger of Douglas and McDonnell Aircraft Corp., rolled out the MD-80 in 1980.

The aircraft company, which needed a major airline to launch the model in the United States, offered very favorable lease terms to American. In 1982, American signed a deal to order 20 Super 80s, in effect to allow it to try out the aircraft type.

American officials, who took delivery of their first MD-80 in May 1983, liked the plane and its price so much that they ordered another 13 that year. In all, American ordered 260 MD-80s from 1982 through 1990.

“It was a seminal moment for us back in the 1980s when that deal was made, before I even started with American,” American Airlines chairman Tom Horton said. “It was our last major fleet renewal, and it was the cornerstone of the growth plan under [former American CEO] Bob Crandall at the time.”

American’s purchase of Reno Air Inc. in 1998 and Trans World Airlines Inc. assets in 2001 added more MD-80s to its fleet. By mid-2001, American flew 373 MD-80s, or nearly one-third of the MD-80 planes ever manufactured.

That turned out to be the high-water mark for the MD-80 at American. The numbers fell slightly by year’s end and have been on a steady decline since.

But for more than 25 years, most domestic flights on American Airlines have been on MD-80s. For American’s Dallas/Fort Worth customers, the ubiquitous MD-80 for years was about the only airplane they knew unless they were boarding an international flight.

Even today, American’s D/FW schedule carries a distinct MD-80 flavor. Its schedule at midweek shows about 275 flights on the MD-80 out of the nearly 500 flights American operates out of D/FW Airport.

But as the number of Boeing and Airbus planes in American’s fleet keep increasing, the MD-80 totals will correspondingly decline, and the last day will arrive for each of the remaining airplanes.

A crusher destroys an older airplane at the Roswell International Air Center in Roswell, N.M.

To the boneyard

For N7530, that day has arrived.

The airplane sat at Gate 24 in D/FW’s Terminal C, where it had arrived from Little Rock at 7:30 p.m. the previous day on its last passenger flight. Flight test pilots Ryan Jones and David Alaback flew in from Tulsa early that morning to ferry the airplane to Roswell.

Alaback, 58, has a long history with the MD-80, first flying that type in 1988, two years after joining American. Jones, who joined American in 1998, has only 102 hours on the airplane. But on this flight, Jones will sit as captain.

Departing the gate around 9:15 a.m., the pilots taxi the aircraft to a west runway, then take off to the south. With only a few people aboard the non-revenue flight, the airplane climbs faster and higher than if it carried its full complement of 140 passengers and three flight attendants.

After turning west and reaching an altitude of about 35,000 feet, each pilot took turns discussing the MD-80 and its last flight.

“There is a certain nostalgia that tugs at my heart,” Alaback said. However, “I’m also grateful having the other airplanes coming in replacing them. When we were taking the DC-10s and the 727s to the boneyard, there weren’t airplanes replacing them. That meant a lot of jobs for a lot of people.”

The usual rule of thumb is that each airplane represents jobs for about 14 pilots and twice that many flight attendants, plus “I don’t know how many mechanics and service people and gate agents,” Alaback said.

“But every airplane represents a large family of people, and it’s gratifying to me to know that we’re replacing them,” he added.

Among the airplane’s attributes, Alaback said, is the MD-80’s ability to land in low-visibility conditions, known as Category-3 landing minimums in aviation terms.

“So it gets you into a lot of places with fog and it also carries a good number of people. It’s just been a real nice airplane,” he said.

It is also a throwback, a “round dial” airplane, not one replete with the flat-panel screens that mark later aircraft. American updated the MD-80 navigation system to allow GPS-guided flights and landings, but the autopilot is pretty much unchanged from the airplane’s delivery.

“It was real good when we got them back in the 1980s and 1990s, and still good today,” Alaback said.

Does this airplane have a personality? Alaback chuckled. “Every airplane has a little idiosyncrasy, how it flies, if it vibrates. You can even tell when you’re taxiing out,” he said.

Some MD-80s start bobbing up and down a little as they taxi at about 15 knots, or just about 17 mph. But speed up or slow down 3 knots, and the oscillations go away.

“Some airplanes, just like a car, you may feel like you’re having to hold your wheel to the right or the left all the time because you’re out of alignment,” Alaback said. “Maybe not the new airplanes, but airplanes like this where you have to physically put in a little correction.”

Jones, 42, also flies the Boeing 777, a much more modern aircraft with flat-panel displays, “fly-by-wire” controls and much greater use of onboard computers to control the aircraft.

“This is definitely a different generation of airplane. I see both ends of the spectrum. I’m having a ball on this airplane. I absolutely love it — because it makes you think. You have to be one step ahead, or it’ll let you know,” he said.

Jones said he has a greater sense that he’s flying when piloting the MD-80.

“When we click everything off, it is a mechanical feel vs. a fly-by-wire.” On turns, climbs and other maneuvers, there aren’t computers limiting and compensating for the airplane’s movements as on the newer models.

“You’ve got to be on it. You have to understand. You have to feel it. I really enjoy that part of it,” Jones said.

Sixty-five minutes after leaving D/FW’s runway, the plane lands at Roswell. The pilots taxi it into place between N516AM and N7519 — two other 24-year-old MD-80s that have already had their engines removed and their paint jobs altered.

As the pilots shut down the airplane’s systems, Matt McDonald, American’s manager of aircraft storage stationed at Roswell, climbs up stairs that drop from the rear of the plane and begins the paperwork to take over responsibility for it.

“It will be buttoned up, the lease return conditions will be negotiated, and the aircraft will be turned over to the owner,” McDonald said.

And that will be the end of N7530’s long service at American Airlines.